Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Positive Or Negative Focus

By Jason Kendall

Look in any bookshop at their Best Seller list today, and you'll see a mass of autobiographies of the rich and famous. From empire builders to glamour models to footballers, they all tell a different story, but each has a thread in common - they focused on the positives and overcame adversity.

This is the way the world works; to be achievers in life we must encourage positive reasons why 'we can' to flood our consciousness, and drown out negative excuses why we can't.

This attitude to studying is paramount for the student. To successfully complete a training program, an optimistic mindset is the biggest tool in a trainee's workbox. A positive approach brings about all sorts of possibilities, circumstances, answers and opportunities to achieve. By contrast, a pessimistic outlook blocks our learning receptors and thwarts creativity .

This is because of our Reticular Activation System - a mechanism that automatically tells our brain what to focus on. Over our lives, we've experienced a huge number things that no longer remain in the forefront of our minds - the majority of what we've learned moves from our conscious mind to our sub-conscious mind, a kind of cupboard that stores all our past beliefs and knowledge.

When we attempt consciously to do something, our RAS (Reticular Activation System) will search for any relevant information in the sub-conscious mind, and bring it to our attention. If we're taking a walk down a street, only the things that have meaning to us will be noticed - the rest is just background noise.

Therefore, if our conscious mind has generally been transferring positive, upbeat messages to our sub-conscious mind, then that's what it will send back. But if our sub-conscious has been fed a bunch of defeatist, downbeat messages, then equally that's also what will come back.

It seems that achievers are able to manipulate the messages filtered through to their sub-conscious minds by deliberately programming their RAS and choosing the exact messages the conscious mind sends. This makes it an essential tool for achieving goals, as the sub-conscious mind can't distinguish between real or imaginary events.

In other words, we need to create a very specific picture of our goal in our conscious mind. The RAS will then pass this on to our subconscious - which, as it believes everything it's told, will then help us achieve the goal. It does this by making us aware of all the relevant information which otherwise might have stayed as 'background noise'.

The writer Napoleon Hill said that we can achieve any realistic goal if we keep focusing on that goal, and stop dwelling on any negative thoughts about it. Obviously, if we keep thinking that we can't hit a goal, our subconscious will help us not to achieve it.

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